The Tower

And now for something completely different.
Commissioned as part of an Astral themed 78 Tarot project, this one was something of a fun diversion, combining all the sci-fi elements that would have utterly enamored my ten-year-old self. It’s something of an homage I suppose to all those 2000ad Future shock covers I would pour over for hours, in the hopes of one day becoming one of their retinue of Art droids.
That never happened of course, and I’m much happier digging the dark furrow I currently do, but as 2000ad turns 40 and I hit my half century next month, it’s worth acknowledging the influences that informed me.

I’ve knocked together a cover of how it might have looked for shits and giggles. One can imagine a Tharg future shock that might accompany it. Something perhaps about ET’s sending space monkeys back in time to populate humanity.

Below is the obligatory bumf to go with the Tarot booklet

“Humanities aspiration has been one that has forever fixed it’s eyes heavenward. If the stars were ciphers to map our destiny, then the looming edifices throughout history seem constructed as a means to reach them. Perhaps it is man’s desire to be closer to the source, Godlike in his eternal spiritual quest to elevate himself from mere mortality. And yet, like the fall of empires past that litter history, man’s arrogance and indignance seem’s always beset by self-destruction and the primal need to reconstruct the natural order.

And so Gods of old are supplanted by interstellar Gods, the desire to fill the void of fallen doctrines (as in the dead hollow tree) with the hope that we are not alone in the universe, that something larger than ourselves stands forever on the periphery, pulling strings. And yet our limited knowledge and ineptitude leave us stumbling around like simians in space, our search for enlightenment, stunted by fear of the unknown, ever ready to crack the skull of a different race with a nearby stone, because our need to feel superior in the microcosm will always usurp any progress, and lesson that could be learned. And as with the ouroboros, we are lost in the cosmic cycle of death, symbolized by the crystal skull.

The Tower then, is a parable of facade, an ephemeral artifact manufactured by the conceit of ego, built on the sands of eternal folly, that could come crashing down in an instant of catastrophic epiphany.”